Byrne tunes out of ‘phoney ratings war’

THE celebrity factor and the phoney ratings war between the networks is forcing Gabriel Byrne to switch off from the American presidential race.

Republican John McCain will be the eventual winner, suggests Byrne, who lives in New York.

“I switched off the TV about six weeks ago.

“I realised what was going on was a phoney ratings war between all the [TV] stations.

“The presidential race has become about celebrity and about polls and the real issues have a secondary place,” he said.

Asked on RTÉ radio’s Tubridy Show who would win, Byrne replied that, two or three weeks ago, he thought Democrat Barak Obama was possibly going to be the winner.

But that had changed with the nomination of Sarah Palin as the Republican running mate and the entry of what he described as the fundamentalist Christian right into the contest.

“That has put everything up in the air,” he said. “Most people I’ve spoken to project a McCain presidency unless something drastic happens.”

He felt some subterranean forces would be at work when voters went into polling booths.

“They’re saying Obama is too thin, too young, too inexperienced, too everything, whereas McCain represents something people can identify with — a recycling of the American Dream and the Vietnam War which Americans have never come to terms with... there’s the heroism, resilience, endurance.”

Byrne was dismissive of Sarah Palin’s beliefs, especially about her views that global warming was not man-made, that creation should be taught in school and her belief about all the animals going into Noah’s ark.

“Science is being denigrated [by Palin] to second place, compared to stories in the Bible.”

Pressed for his prediction on the election, he “feared” it would be a McCain presidency.